and made the door fast. Then I commenced pacing up and down the room. The tumult was subsiding in my brain; it worked to some purpose now. time; "Larry loves me," I said to myself after a "he loves me as I love him. Of this I am very sure. If I could persuade myself that he no longer loved me, the agony could be better borne. Pride would sting me to rebellion against my own weakness. But Lawrence is mine. He will not do a right thing if he marry Ellice Manvers, with the memory of our last meeting in his heart. And he must remember. He cannot forget. That stern woman in her grave has done a great wrong to her child and to me. Had she no pity in her soul? no tenderness in her eart? Could she not forgive my hasty judgment of Lawrence, when my brain was half crazed with a bitter grief? My punishment is greater than my fault. What right had she to adjudge my fate? How dare she say 'love,' and 'love not,' to her son, as she listed? God-given power that never was. should he obey? But he will obey. Of this : Why 198 DOOM TO THE BETROTHED. I am certain. It is this obedience that has kept him silent and absent, and will in the end compel him to a sacrifice. Ah! between you, my doom is bitter, stern mother and obedient son! "When he holds her hand at the altar, will he not remember our troth-kiss, and its pledge? When the priest's blessing is pronounced, and he takes her in his arms, will he not think of another, who is more truly his than she can ever be? If they past through life together, will no shadow intervene? Will not a haunting memory startle him, even in serious moments, and when life's cares are hardest to be borne? God help him, and God help me! We shall both be very wretched." I buried my face in my hands and wept. + CHAPTER XII. LOSS AND SUBSTITUTION. "Du Heilige, rufe dein Kind zurück; Ich habe gelebt und geliebet." SCHILLER. "I have fled from all to Jesus Christ, and in Him alone I have sweet peace." The Wide Wide World. NSCRUTABLE, yet not wholly past finding out, are the ways of the Most High. He gives to His children sorrow and joy. But they seldom cry in either case, "Oh, God, be pitiful!"-"Let God be praised!" Of the earth, earthy, they seek consolation here, with sprinkled ashes, and sackcloth moist with tears an active faith would scarce have suffered them to shed. And when joy comes, they have no heart for the better bliss beyond earth and time. And so the rod falls again, and yet again, until the chastened and humbled sufferer can understand the punishment that serves to lead him to the cross. I did not seek God in my woe, save with vain and vague petitioning words. There was little faith; there was less hope; a blank despair filled my mind. Heavily the tempests gathered; great waters flowed over me in the night of my distress. And the winds ceased not, the whelming floods did not abate, until I cried, prostrate in humiliation, "I no longer refuse to drink of the bitter cup, oh my Father Thy will be done!" I have little remembrance of how the time passed the week following that miserable day, on which I learned the news of Lawrence Esterlyn's engagement. Very wretched I was, and incompetent to perform the most trivial of my duties. Mildred had gone with her mother to spend a few days with a friend in the neighborhood, and I was thus freed from the inquiries which otherwise must have + been made had they been at home. Walworth did not question me; he saw that I shrank from observation, and allowed me to pass him with scarce a remark. From Mr. Forrester I received little notice. I doubt whether he knew that I was altered. It is a dreary thing to rise in the morning, with no hope for its hours; to lie down at night with no cheerful thought of the morrow. My days were a weariness to me. I took many listless rambles alone, for I had asked Kitty to accompany the children in their walks, feeling myself wholly unfit to answer their questions after the school exercises were over. The task of instructing them had become insupportably tedious, and I was frequently obliged to give over hearing a lesson from an utter incapacity to understand it. Mrs. Grey met me in one of my walks, and questioned me concerning my health, with an earnest, anxious look, and urged me to come for a day to the farm. I found means to avoid another meeting. The restless wandering in the open air was far preferable to the solitude of my own apart |